Tin Pan

WCNI did a birthday broadcast featuring over an hour of our music!!

Last few days of sub week continue. It was our 60th gig this season. Caner back on the alto and Aygû on the bass. Tonight we played at Paloma Finesse.

Today I want to talk about balance. I haven’t seen too much of the olympics but what I have seen is very inspiring. Simone Biles on the balance beam and mat and the US Artistic Swimming team made me feel great. I see them working at the edges of what is possible, expanding those edges. It makes me feel great.

Today, this afternoon, I finally got back to my exercise routine and pushed myself a bit to do the longest swim I’ve ever done in my life. 600 breaths. I count each one. It’s my meditation time as well. It took me over an hour. I felt great afterwards. As I’m doing it I go through phases of feeling great and pushing hard and then getting a bit winded and needing to temper my strokes so that I can continue. Sometimes the timing of the waves is such that I can’t always get a big breath because I’ll inhale some salt water and for that reason I need to always have some air in the lungs just in case. When everything is feeling good each stroke is a stretch a pull and a glide.

Tonight on the bandstand it was hella hot and we had a fun, interactive crowd so that turns me on and makes me want to give them everything I have. And as I’m singing and playing horn, that same awareness of breath was in my mind. When can I take the next big breath? How much air do I have in the tank? When do I need to push and when do I need to recover? I am moving my body almost constantly for 90 minutes. At one point I felt a little dizzy but it didn’t get me weirded out or spinning into anxiety mode as maybe it would have last year. Knowing that I can go from breath to breath and just keep swimming let me stay focused. According to my watch my heart rate got up to 145bpm on stage tonight. That’s pretty high.

The photo here is about twenty minutes after the show when my pulse was still over 100. It took a while to settle down tonight. That happens sometimes. Experience and paying attention lets me live inside my own balance.

See you tomorrow . . .

I’m not sure what this paddle was intended for but Caner spotted it and asked me to pose for this photo. And that is flattering and kind.

I don’t know about the best but I sure am trying to be a good one.�
Tonight was fairly easy by our unfortunately inured standard. Working with subs is often challenging. It takes some fine tuning to understand their competencies and lean the music in that direction without losing the sound of the band. At one point tonight, as the saxophonist was shredding his second chorus (note: a 2 chorus solo in Tin Pan land is a rarity), the music was headed firmly into the land of hard-bop. I signaled to Caner - tonight playing bass (phenomenal!) - to play less legato and more tuba-like to steer us back on course.

Other band leader stuff is more subtle. For example, in case the guitar and the drums are drifting in time, I have to make eye contact with Emre and then give a subtle head nod over to Bartu to remind him to lock in. In the heat of the battle, when musical decisions are sailing by like projectiles, I find myself communicating to the band in English. This did not help Bülent or Bartu at all tonight as they didn’t understand what I was saying. I wish I had the bandwidth to split my brain in three to accommodate this. It’s a fun challenge.

A big part of band leading tonight was reading the crowd and being patient with them. At this particular venue, the crowd starts quite thin but builds up over time. We gradually gather steam and intensity over our 90 minute show. This takes some careful choices. At one point I asked who in the audience spoke English and literally one person out of about one hundred raised their hand. I then realized that all my banter was just sound and energy and I could focus on making people feel excited and comfortable with just the tone of my voice. That’s all it is anyway, probably.

It worked. We got asked to do an encore.

See you tomorrow as our week of subs continues . . .

As I mentioned in my last post Tuğrul is on vacation this week. This was initially a big shock to our momentum that we have been building as a band. As a result we are shuffling players with different subs throughout the week. Caner will be playing Saxophone, Guitar and Bass as a result. How lucky are we to have such a talented wildcard! Caner has improved so much and so fast since he started playing sax on the gig. It’s astonishing and wonderful.

Tonight and for three days this week we will have Aygû on the bass chair. Aygû is a classical cello player with the symphony and has been touring all over for the last few months. Unlike my experience with other Antalya symphony players, this guy really knows how to play jazz musically and confidently. This is of utmost importance as a rhythm section player.

His time feel is excellent, his lines are on point, his look on stage is charismatic, and he carries himself with a calm degree of swagger. Rare is the sub, I’ve found, who can come into a gig - without a rehearsal - and make the music happen while reading charts on stage. As a band leader I was so happy with him. He has the rare ability to understand the shape of the songs we are playing and make musical and dynamic choices on the spot. Was it perfect? No. Was it musical, hell yes! And lastly, and also importantly, he, after just one suggestion during sound check, changed his default modern jazz playing style to accommodate our specific style.

As always, when I meet someone who is talented, open-minded, and has the essence of music flowing through him, I am overjoyed and feel myself to be quite fortunate. Thanks for being you, Aygû!

See you tomorrow.

Our dear Mr. Black is on holiday this week back up in Izmir and we are once again thrown into disarray. Tuğrul has improved so much in such a short time and now that he is not around we are very much feeling his absence.

I don’t want to disparage Cemre, Tuğrul’s temporary replacement. He did a respectable job tonight being that it was his first time playing in this genre. But just coming aboard like this is a tall order for someone unfamiliar with the repertoire and the style. It’s a fairly demanding gig that takes some getting used to.

There is a long distance between reading from a sheet of music to knowing the tunes and adding energy and creativity to a band. It is a very rare sub that can provide this on the first time out.

And then there are the vocals. Tuğul has really stepped up in this regard singing accurate harmonies in a confident manner. Emre is just starting to help in this regard and Bartu and Caner are doing their best, but it is really Tuğrul who is making the group vocal sections fun and energetic.

We all have some adjusting to do until Tuğrul get’s back next week.

See you tomorrow . . .

Hi everyone…. I need to catch up. I’ve been quite sick but performing nonetheless. The show must go on. Headache, stuffed up head, sore throat, cough. I needed to pick songs that were lower in register for me because to sing in to top of my range was very painful. So glad we have enough repertoire to pick and choose now.

Monday’s show was our 53rd at Oceana and it was a big challenge for me musically. I felt like I couldn’t create anything. All my ideas seemed boring to me and when I gave up and waited for a new idea to just come to me… nothing was coming. I am going to blame the antihistamines I was loaded up on before the show so I could breathe at all. I felt irritable and numb. . . and critical! Nothing anyone else was playing made me happy either. I was finding fault with everything. Luckily, I didn’t lash out at anyone and kept my opinions to myself until they could be expressed constructively.

The best constructive thing to come out of the gig was this. At this point, Emre is quite capable of giving me the kind of attack I need from the quarter note. It has drive and a bit of aggression to it that I desire. But… he is not connecting it with Tuğrul and Bartu so the rhythm section feels unreliable as if there at least two different quarter note feelings at the same time. The end result - no real groove or elasticity is possible. In two words: not swingin’.

The message I conveyed to the three of them was this: The most valuable skill, once you know your parts and your instrument is your skill at connecting with the other musicians in the moment. Every night you will have an opportunity to grow in this skill.

See you in a few moments . . . for another installment.